A moment later the destroyer’s engines ceased to throb; she slipped gently through the waves, and presently was resting motionless, rising and falling, while the ocean castaways bent to the oars and pulled around in her lee.
Then a coil of line spun from the hands of a waiting bluejacket, the man in the bow of the lifeboat caught it and the next instant the haggard-faced occupants of the little craft were being helped over the destroyer’s rail.
There were twenty-two in all--a motley, cosmopolitan lot, the typical crew of a modern steamship. Tow-headed, broad-faced Scandinavians; sallow, black-haired, blue-cheeked Spaniards, whose greasy trousers and grimy faces marked them as wipers, firemen and engine room crew; a few swarthy Italians; one or two who might have been of almost any nationality; two colored men; and a broad-shouldered, ruddy-faced individual with keen, pale blue eyes who was evidently in command.
“Strike me pink, but we’re lucky beggars!” exclaimed the latter, as he leaped on to the destroyer’s deck.
“Are you the captain?” asked Commander Disbrow. “Glad to have saved you. We got your radio yesterday morning, but had little chance of finding you. More luck than anything else. All your crew accounted for?”
The Englishman drew himself up and saluted in true naval style. “No, Sir,” he exclaimed. “I’m the chief officer, ship Devonshire, Liverpool for Trinidad and Demerara. Captain Masters lost ’is life, Sir--defending ’is ship, Sir.”
“Brave man!” exclaimed Mr. Pauling. “Went down with his ship, I suppose.”
The Englishman turned and looked at him in surprise. “Whatever do you mean, Sir?” he exclaimed. “Bless us, the ship wasn’t sunk, Sir. Captain Masters was shot down on his bridge, Sir.”
“The ship wasn’t sunk!” cried Mr. Pauling. “Then why are you adrift in a small boat and why did you send an S. O. S. and what did occur? Come, let’s get this matter straightened out at once!”
“The ship was took, Sir. Made a prize of by the bloody submarine--begging your pardon for the word, Sir. It was this way, Sir. The dirty beggars never gave us arf a chance--played a dirty Hun trick on us, the swine! You see, Sir, we sighted a drifting boat full of men and bore down and took them abroad, Sir, and no sooner were they over the rail than they whips out their revolvers and orders our ’ands up. Blow me for a bloomin’ fish if we wasn’t took that by surprise, Sir, that we does it, Sir. All but the Captain and ‘Sparks.’ They were looking on--you know all hands always crowds the rails to see what’s going on when a boat’s picked up, Sir--and it was all over in a minute. No sooner had they stuck us up than the bloomin’ sub bobs up. With that we was all aback and that dazed, with the suddenness of it and the sub and all, that we don’t rightly know what to make of it, Sir. And then ‘Sparks’ makes a dash for his room and Captain Masters fires at the dirty swine just as one of them jumps after ‘Sparks.’ I see, poor ‘Sparks’ stagger and lurch into his door and the bloomin’ beggar what shot him drops and the next second there’s a rifle shot from the sub and Captain Masters springs up and pitches into the sea, Sir. You say you got a radio from the ship, Sir? Then ‘Sparks’ must ’ave got it off before he died, Sir.”